"Tempter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that, before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... me not, for haste: 'Twas hard, With no return such counsel to reward. My work is done, or much the greater part; She's now the tempter to ensnare his heart. He, whose firm faith no reason could remove, Will melt before ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... herself as a simple-minded girl, ignorant of the world and of life, and conscious only of her boundless love for this one glorious man, and to whom the memories of a less harmless past seemed like wicked dreams sent by the Tempter to molest her chastity. This self-deception, or rather retrogression of her instincts, led her into touches of mysticism. The story of little Sonia who had fallen in love with the ten-year-old Wilhelm at first sight, to ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... undeserving people; that the workhouse test would separate the husband from wife, and the father from the children; and, above all, that certain clauses of the new measure would leave the once innocent girl who had been led astray by some vile tempter to bear the whole legal responsibility as well as the public shame of her sin. It is not necessary for us now to go over at any length the long arguments which were brought up on both sides of the controversy. Many capable and high-minded observers were carried away ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stood with a throbbing heart as the waiter passed down the room. The tempter was before her son offering the glass of wine, which he yet refused. She saw him start and look disconcerted as the waiter spoke to him, then wave the glass of wine aside. But he did ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... when, the temptations of Satan withstood, angels came to Him upon the mountain. In the lower distance the kingdoms of the world grew dim beneath the shadow that fell from the vanquished and retreating tempter, and from the opening heavens a dazzling cloud of angels streamed toward the solitary Figure on the height. By and by Millicent's eyes took note of it. She half smiled. There ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the nail and thorn! Thy tender flesh will ill sustain Thee when the sorrows of death and the pains of hell get hold upon Thee!" So Satan came; but there was no response in the heart of Christ, no answering voice from the depths of His soul, no traitor within to join hands with the tempter without. There was no square inch of territory in all Christ's nature which the devil could claim, or from ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... a lesson he never afterward forgot. If he was tempted to do what he knew was wrong, he thought of Archy's day in the woods, and the tempter instantly left him. The boy who had been so badly hurt, did not die, as the doctor feared; but he suffered great pain, and was ill for a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... thought came to him that he should go through the ceremony after all, that he should do as the people expected, that he should accept the Governorship, and then defy the social ostracism of the island by making Kate his wife. "It's not yet too late," said the tempter. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the girl when she "in her coffin sat, and did admire her winding sheet," before she related her experiences "among lonesome wild deserts and briary woods, which dismal were and dark." But immediately after her description of the lake of burning misery and of the fierce grim Tempter, the Puritan matter-of-fact acceptance of it all is suggested ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Pennsylvania tablet, a further analogy [107] with the story of Adam and Eve, but with this striking difference, that whereas in the Babylonian tale the woman is the medium leading man to the higher life, in the Biblical story the woman is the tempter who brings misfortune to man. This contrast is, however, not inherent in the Biblical story, but due to the point of view of the Biblical writer, who is somewhat pessimistically inclined and looks upon primitive life, when ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... STRAT. The tempter he; Such friendship leads to death, or infamy. Oh, cursed friend, who, in dear love's despite, Has torn him from thine arms—his neophyte! He dragged him to the front;—baptized, annealed— He fights ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... "I disbelieve you, tempter!" cried Surrey indignantly. "Wyat is too good a Christian, and too worthy a knight, to ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Comedie Humaine as the tempter and benefactor of Lucien de Rubempre, whom he loves with an intense devotion, and would exploit as a power and influence in the social, literary and political world. The deep-dyed criminal seems to live a life of pleasure, fashion and social rank in the person of this protege. The abnormal, and ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... self-conscious and thoroughly ashamed of the trip into which his impetuous adoration had driven him. Just as he was tugging at the door in the effort to open it that he might order the driver to take him back to the hotel, a sly tempter whispered something in his ear; his fancy was caught, and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... they have endured so much and so long, and have deferred this act of self-defense until to-day." Mr. Clay's speech was insulting and exasperating to the last degree. His colleague, Mr. Fitzpatrick, a man of better tempter, showed reserve and an indisposition to discuss the situation. He contented himself with the expression of a general concurrence in the views of Mr. Clay, adding no word of bitterness himself. He said that ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Ugo.... The Mephistopheles of Herr Formes was a remarkable personation, being truly demoniacal in the play of his countenance, and as characteristic as any one of Retsch's drawings of Goethe's fiend-tempter. His singing being specially German was in every way well suited to the occasion." In spite of the excellence of the interpretation, Spohr's "Faust" did not take any hold on the lovers of music in England, and even in Germany, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... untiring employment of the grand foe of God and man. It is indeed the darling achievement of infernal skill, to inflate a poor worm with pride of talent, and fill his heart with hatred to the Gospel, and then persuade him that his hatred arises from its falsehood and absurdity. No event can afford the tempter greater joy, than success in persuading perishing sinners to reject the only possible way of escape from eternal death, and to contemn, as foolishness, that doctrine which is the wisdom of God and the power of God to salvation to every ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... as he had decided that he could not, the tempter suggested a plan which seemed so feasible and fair that the future, with a secret to guard, did not look so formidable, and to ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... you. If these monks, these nuns, and even your friend Sherasmin, had had a conscience as pure as yours, my horn would not have set them dancing; but where is the monk or the nun who can always be deaf to the voice of the tempter, and Sherasmin in the desert has often doubted ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... entrance into the world of sin and death. Our Lord Himself places the whole argument of His teaching on marriage and the permissibility of divorce on Genesis ii. 24 (cf. St. Matt. xix. and St. Mark x.). In St. John viii. 44 our Lord clearly alludes to the Edenic narrative when He speaks of the tempter as a "manslayer ([Greek: anthropoktonos]) from the beginning." Still more remarkable is the argument of St. Paul in Romans v.; altogether based as it is on the historical verity of the account of the Fall; and other ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... sister-city Ghent to imitate its own baseness in surrendering without a struggle; and that powerful, turbulent, but most anarchical little commonwealth was but too ready to listen to the voice of the tempter. "The ducats of Spain, Madam, are trotting about in such fashion," wrote envoy Des Pruneaux to Catherine de Medici, "that they have vanquished a great quantity of courages. Your Majesties, too, must employ money if you wish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor father, nor master ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... is taken into the house and put on his shelf and left there, because I still happen to have a body attached to my spirit, which, if not fed at the ordinary time, becomes a nuisance. Yet he is right; luncheon is a snare of the tempter, and I would perhaps try to sail by it like Ulysses if I had a biscuit in my pocket to comfort me, but there are the babies to be fed, and the Man of Wrath, and how can a respectable wife and mother sail past any meridian ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... be the best Scholar in all knowledges of arts and tongues, & so have the best skill in Physicke, judgment in Physiognomie, and knowledge of what disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for cattell too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile tempter knowing such a man lyable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) as Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; if they know the man, and seek to make a difference between the Witches and the party, it may be by telling ...
— The Discovery of Witches • Matthew Hopkins
... from thy vertue. What's this? what's this? is this her fault, or mine? The Tempter, or the Tempted, who sins most? ha? Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I, That, lying by the Violet in the Sunne, Doe as the Carrion do's, not as the flowre, Corrupt with vertuous season: Can it be, That Modesty may more betray our Sence Then womans lightnesse? hauing waste ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... long since understood that Donald Bean Lean played the part of tempter on this occasion. His motives were shortly these. Of an active and intriguing spirit, he had been long employed as a subaltern agent and spy by those in the confidence of the Chevalier, to an extent beyond what was suspected even by Fergus Mac-Ivor, whom, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the head another animal, that, with its mouth open, its tongue protruding, looks at its enemy over its shoulder. Blood is seen oozing from its tongue and face. This picture forcibly recalls to the mind the myth of the garden of Eden. For here we have the garden, the fruit, the woman, the tempter. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... signs of disintegration were apparent among the Anti-Masons. Albert H. Tracy, despairing of success, began accepting interviews with Martin Van Buren, who sought to break anti-Masonry by conciliating its leaders. It was the voice of the tempter. Tracy listened and then became a missionary, inducing John Birdsall and other members of the Legislature to join him. Tracy had been an acknowledged leader. He was older, richer, and of larger experience than most of his associates, and, in appealing to him, Van Buren ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... I don't write, she'll stop writing. It's better so. I couldn't be any use to her now," Dick argued, and the tempter suggested that he should make known his condition. Every nerve in him revolted. "I have fallen low enough already. I'm not going to beg for pity. Besides, it would be cruel to her." He strove to put Maisie out of his thoughts; but the blind have many opportunities for thinking, and as ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... stupider, if he had even made fewer friends, he might have walked safely all his life. As it was, instead of listening only to the Voice of God, he allowed himself to listen to one of the most dangerous suggestions of the Tempter. Nayler began to think that he might imitate Jesus Christ not only in inner ways, not only by trying to be meek and loving and gentle and self-sacrificing, as He was to all the people around Him. That is the way we may all try to be like Him. Nayler ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... these peaks, the Quarantana, is supposed to be the "high mountain" from which the Tempter showed Jesus the "kingdoms of the world." In the foreground of that view, sweeping from the snowy summits of Hermon in the north, past the Greek cities of Pella and Scythopolis, down the vast valley with its wealth of palms and balsams, must have ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... warning to others, I am by no means anxious to be held up as a moral scarecrow. Rather let me take warning myself, amend my life, abandon intemperance, which leads to all manner of wickedness, and suffer myself no more to be ensnared by the wiles and delusions of the tempter in the form of a fair woman. No—no—I will alter ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... books, dethrone our gods, Unpeople all the temples, shaking down That law which feeds the priests and props the realms?" But Buddha answered, "What thou bidd'st me keep Is form which passes, but the free Truth stands; Get thee unto thy darkness." Next there drew Gallantly nigh a braver Tempter, he, Kama, the King of passions, who hath sway Over the gods themselves, lord of all loves, Ruler of Pleasure's realm. Laughing he came Unto the Tree, bearing his bow of gold Wreathed with red blooms, and arrows of desire Pointed with five-tongued delicate flame which stings The heart ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... battle with the tempter. He took him into his bosom at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and received his suggestions and bowed to his dictates. Because he suffered, and decreed that he would suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was great-minded in his calamity. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in a quandary with its mob of unemployed baker unionists, till the voice of the tempter ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... pistols were discharged at the flying Cowboys, and a spent bullet broke a pane of glass within a few feet of Caesar. Imitating the posture of the great tempter of our race, the black sought the protection of the inside of the building, and immediately ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Scripture. As by CHRIST, the Prince of all the Deuilles is called, Beelzebub in that place, which I alleaged against the power of any hereticques to cast out Deuils. By IOHN in the Reuelation, the old tempter is called, Sathan the Prince of all the euill angels. And the last, to wit, Lucifer, is but by allegoric taken from the day Starre (so named in diuers places of the Scriptures) because of his excellencie (I meane the Prince ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... spent, with whom she had been so closely connected, if she could but have turned to you, and remembering your earnest life, your honest endeavors toward the right, your earnest struggles with sin and self; the evident marks of the Lord Jesus all about you; and, remembering this, have quelled the tempter in human form, who stood waiting for a verdict, with a determined—"I have known one"—what might not have been gained for your ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... thee Mara, tempter, Evil One, Prince of this world, I know thy voice, thy meaning. The gifts thou offerest are transient treasures, And thy dominion is mere vanity. I go to found a kingdom in the realm Of the immortal state which lasts for ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... "Alas—the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how soon it may be too late!—You can still repair some of the wrong you have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to me.... ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... The tempter rose up and walked to the other end of the room, whence, while he pretended to be looking over a few of my books and pictures, I was aware he was eyeing me closely, and gradually compelling me by sheer force of ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... "five hundred," the exact sum, for then it was that the tempter entered into Josh Cree's heart. Five hundred dollars! just the amount of the mortgage. "Who owns wild beasts? The man that kills them," said the tempter, and the thought was a live one in his breast as Josh rode back to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the birds twittered, and the stream ran proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with the passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home a nameless child. Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision of schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,—worked until, on a summer's day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother like a hurt child, and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the tempter: "Man does not live by bread alone." Do any of you suppose that Jesus meant to inform the devil that man needs other kinds of food in addition, such as meats, and fruits, and vegetables? He had no such thought. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... "is my old friend to become my tempter now at another crisis in my life? But you do not mean it. You are trying me. Come, I have been tried enough. You seem to have given me a new lease of life. Let us have no more trifling with duty; we have both suffered enough. Tell ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... are not tempted to drink—'tis the same at the wedding and the christening, and in almost all the transactions of your lives. How then can you answer for yourselves, especially when your spirits may happen to be elevated, and your hearts glad? Oh! it is then, my friends, that the tempter approaches you, and probably implants in your unguarded hearts the germ of that accursed habit which has destroyed millions. How often have you heard it said of many men, even within the range of your own knowledge, 'Ah, he was an industrious, well-conducted, and respectable man—until ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... they all agreed, and sent to Camillus to desire him to take the command; but he answered that he would not until they that were in the Capitol should legally appoint him. When this answer was returned, they admired the modesty and tempter of Camillus; but they could not tell how to find a messenger to carry the intelligence to the Capitol, or rather, indeed, it seemed altogether impossible for any one to get to the citadel whilst the enemy was in full possession of the city. But among the young men there was one ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... assure you that at that moment my heart absolutely stood still. The tempter stood at my elbow and whispered, and I deliberately smothered the call of my conscience. I did what Joseph's brethren did, what brought Judas Iscariot to hopeless remorse. There was no doubt that the hue and cry was after the two elegantly ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... others you have limits, and that no professional eagerness, and no professional activity, shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and practices of religion: remember the text; put the great question really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put. In the midst of your highest success, in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, 'Master, what shall I do to inherit ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory—the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests this ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Christ was rendered necessary by the fall of man, so the first dark intimation of Him was given immediately after the fall. It is found in the sentence of punishment which was passed upon the tempter. Gen. iii. 14, 15. A correct understanding of it, however, can be obtained only after we have ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... another Masonic order of the androgyne type with satanic practices. He divides the Egyptian Rite of Adoption into three grades; in that of apprentice, the discourse represents Adonai as the Genius of Pride, and the serpent-tempter of Genesis as the eternal principle of goodness; in that of Companion, the symbolism of the ritual enforces the necessity of rehabilitating the character of the mystic serpent; in that of Egyptian Mistress, there is a pretended evocation of planetary spirits by means of a clairvoyante, and Leo Taxil ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... I say, postpone even a good lesson if you can, for fear of conveying a bad one. On this earth, meant by nature to be man's first paradise, beware lest you act the tempter by giving to innocence the knowledge of good and evil. Since you cannot prevent the child's learning from outside examples, restrict your care to the task of impressing these examples on his mind in ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... men and driving them into swine. There are numerous passages of the Bible which speak of the Devil, the Devil and his angels, spirit of an unclean devil, dumb spirit, foul spirit, unclean spirit, evil spirit, witch, witchcraft, wizards, necromancers, satan, the tempter, prince of the power of the air, prince ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!—But I yielded not; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in passing and repassing. The chimneys are twisted in the most approved style of the Dutch Brabant, and, although wanting the stork's nests on their summits, it seems as if there might be that woman's tempter, comfort, around the hearths beneath. The offices, too, have an enticing ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... into a loud laugh. "Ah, you take me for a tempter, Mr. Wenzel," he said; "but I am in earnest; and if you will get up for me a splendid riot to-morrow, I will set you at liberty and no one shall interfere with you as long as you render yourself worthy of my indulgence by obedience and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... had fallen from the wagon, and which Obed and I afterwards picked up, was a small cask of brandy. We were both of us very abstemious, or we should not have been the strong, hearty fellows we were. The cask, therefore, had not even been broached. The tempter, however, now came suggesting to me that I might soon forget all my miseries if I would but occasionally take a taste of the fire-water. I resisted him, however. I knew that if I once began I might go on, and not know when ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... there was any thing in which the soul of Tony delighted, it was an apple pasty of any shape or dimensions; and the tempter had unwittingly chosen ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the answer. "I think he's been on his last spree. And he wouldn't have gone on this one only that he was tempted by some person. Put this tempter out of the way, and it will mean Ham's safety. Now we've got ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... the study of the Torah. Disguised as a Rabbi, he was approached by a man who promised to relieve him of all material cares if he would but abide with him. Refusing to leave Jabneh, the centre of Jewish scholarship, he said to the tempter: "Wert thou to offer me a thousand million gold denarii, I would not quit the abode of the law, and dwell in a place in which there is ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... which Lord M. unfolds his hypothesis that originally the human race had been a variety of the ape. On which hypothesis, by the way, Dr. Adam Clarke's substitution of ape for serpent, in translating the word nachash, (the brute tempter of Eve,) would have fallen to the ground, since this would simply have been the case of one human being tempting another. It followed inevitably, according to Lord M., however painful it might be to human dignity, that in this, their early stage of brutality, men must have had tails. My ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... lay down in bed and was somewhat better; half an hour after I heard a clamour under my head; I thought that then the tempter went away; immediately there came over me a rigor so strong from the head and the whole body, with some din, and this several times. I found that something holy was over me. I thereupon fell asleep, and ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... to the most fertile plains in the world; rich provinces, large cities will be in your power; you will then obtain honor, glory, and wealth."—Proclamation of April 26, 1796:—"Friends, I guarantee that conquest to you!"—Cf. in Marmont's memoirs the way in which Bonaparte plays the part of tempter in offering Marmont, who refuses, an opportunity ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... miracle in his behalf; but he proposed another challenge: he would try with Savonarola the ordeal of fire. He knew, he said, that he must perish, but at least he should perish avenging the cause of religion, since he was certain to involve in his destruction the tempter who plunged so many souls beside his ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... having nought to do, Was pleased to let the magnet wheedle, Till closer still the tempter drew, And off at length eloped ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Though that I might a thousand winters tell, — The pains of thilke* cursed house of hell *that But for to keep us from that cursed place Wake we, and pray we Jesus, of his grace, So keep us from the tempter, Satanas. Hearken this word, beware as in this case. The lion sits *in his await* alway *on the watch* To slay the innocent, if that he may. Disposen aye your heartes to withstond The fiend that would you make thrall and bond; He may not tempte you over your might, For Christ will be ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last, on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and never before had the heliotropes ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... did he waver. The tempter, whispering in his ear, told him that he could conceal his knowledge, advise Sloan to sell, take his chance with Joan, and let the sleeping dog lie, forever undiscovered. It told him that Sloan was admittedly rich beyond his needs, and that with him the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... would make a good wife for a petty country gentleman? Do you think I should become the character very well, Laura?" Pen asked. "Remember temptation walks about the hedgerows as well as the city streets: and idleness is the greatest tempter of all." ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... natural law of sin and sickness, and if we just let ourselves go and sink into the trend of circumstances we shall go down and sink under the power of the tempter. But there is another law of spiritual life and of physical life in Christ Jesus to which we can rise and through which we can counterpoise and overcome the other law that bears us down. But to do this requires real spiritual energy ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Hamilton's poem was discovered. As much of Sunday as he was able, Louis spent with Casson, trying to discover what could have become of the poem, and in devising all manner of schemes for its recovery and restoration. Little comfort he received from his tempter—Casson alternately laughed at his fears, and blamed his cowardice—and, in order to escape this, Louis affected to be indifferent to the consequences, concealing his heaviness of heart under assumed mirth and unconcern. He had lately spent many ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... see nothing we had done ourselves that was not forced upon us in self-defense, and capable of vindication. We had acted all throughout, upon a necessity he had woven round us like a net. We were, in fact, the victims, and he was the cool, crafty, heartless tempter and persecutor. We did all we could to forget the brief gleam of humanity he had betrayed the evening before. What was that, weighed against years of oppression and cruelty? And even if we were inclined to admit that it showed his character in rather ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... offered him, as Mara offered Gotama, as Satan offered Jesus, the empire of the earth. Zarathrustra rebuked the devil first with stones, then with pious words. From him, as from the Buddha and the Christ, abashed the tempter retreated.[9] ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... succeed, who has succeeded yet? Warring against Ormuzd, Ahura Mazda, was Ahriman, Angra Mainyus, literally the being of an evil mind, the ill-conditioned being. He was labouring perpetually to spoil the good work of Ormuzd alike in nature and in man. He was the cause of the fall of man, the tempter, the author of misery and death; he was eternal and uncreate as Ormuzd was. But that, perhaps, was a corruption of the purer and older Zoroastrian creed. With it, if Ahriman were eternal in the past, he would not be eternal in the future. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... fork'ed plant, as if The serpent tempter, in his rage, Had put his tongue in every leaf To mock ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... be whatever torments you: and will you let love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of God. Are you willing that the tempter should intercept it, and respire it polluted into your ear? Do not make me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you, nor tremble lest she look down on you with a reproachful pity. To her alone, O Dante, dare I confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and then. Virtuous people are generally content to resist temptation, but Wallace is apt to attack the tempter. I dare say it isn't wise, but that's the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Desert, in time, the simple few Who Virtue's barren path pursue; Adopt my maxims—follow me— To Baal bow the prudent knee; Deny thy God, betray thy friend, At Baal's altars hourly bend, So shalt thou rich and great be seen; To be great now, you must be mean.' Hence, Tempter, to some weaker soul, Which fear and interest control; 900 Vainly thy precepts are address'd Where Virtue steels the steady breast; Through meanness wade to boasted power, Through guilt repeated ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... from the head and the outstretched arms of which spring the branches and the foliage. It is worthy of remark, that many painters, the greatest of them (Raphael) at their head, have represented the tempter of Eden as a beautiful woman, whose body terminates in a serpent. It was a mistake on their part to do so. They knew how much of the Devil a woman might have in her, and how irresistible a temptress she is; but they forgot, that, on this occasion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... pleasure my partner took the gem, holding it up so that Louis could view it plainly, and said: "But where has your base tempter been keeping himself these past two days, Donald? Have you had any secret communications with him? Better 'fess up, or it may ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, was he sincere now? Was his object now as then—the suppression of the devilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishment of which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter? Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by other ways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... suppose great horror and indignation on the part of Lady Byron. She may have regarded her sister as the victim of a most singularly powerful tempter. Lord Byron, as she knew, had tried to corrupt her own morals and faith. He had obtained a power over some women, even in the highest circles in England, which had led them to forego the usual decorums of their ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on parchment. The architect still wavered, now eager to accept the offer, and now vowing that the stipulated price was too frightful. In the end he was given time wherein to come to a decision, and he hurried from the place at hot speed as the tempter ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... whole hours together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing my spirit against it; lest haply, before I was aware, some wicked thought might arise in my heart that might consent thereto: and sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but then should I be as tortured on a rack for whole days together."—"But, to be brief, one morning as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other times, most fiercely ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... that fault had followed him a thousand leagues,—pursued after him even into the strange land to which he had come to hear the words of the Universal Teacher. Accursed beauty! surely framed by the Tempter of tempters, by Mara himself, for the perdition of the just! Wisely had Bhagavat warned his disciples: "O ye Cramanas, women are not to be looked upon! And if ye chance to meet women, ye must not suffer your eyes to dwell upon them; ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... am to speak of 'Home, sweet Home,' and of those that dwell there, the great multitude of the redeemed. It is a very holy place, there is no speck on the golden pavement, no evil to be found within the city. The tempter can never enter there, sin is unknown; all is very, very holy. And on the white robes of those who dwell there is no stain; pure and clean and spotless, bright and fair as light, are those robes of theirs. Nothing to soil them, nothing to spoil their beauty, they ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... mellea, FRIES), which is stigmatized as valde venenatus by Persoon, an expert on the subject. It is even the mushroom most frequently made use of, because of its being so plentiful, especially at the foot of the mulberry trees. I find the Satanic bolete, that dangerous tempter; the belted milk mushroom (Lactarius zonarius, BULL.), whose burning flavor rivals the pepper of its woolly kinsman; the smooth-headed amanita (Amanita leiocophala, D. C.), a magnificent white dome rising out of an ample volva and fringed at the edges with floury relics resembling ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... was the word he employed all through, for he felt no doubt Elodie had been seduced, cajoled, trifled with. He could not so much as conceive any other possibility,—that she had obeyed an overmastering desire, an irresistible craving, listened to the tempter's voice in the shape of her own flesh and blood; he could not find it credible that the fair victim, a creature of hot passion and a fond heart, had offered herself a willing sacrifice; to satisfy his ideal, she must needs have been overborne by force or fraud, constrained by sheer ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... without shame, to sell themselves for pelf, To aid the cause of darkness, murder man— Without inquiry murder, and yet call Their trade the trade of honour—high-soul'd honour— Yet honour shall accord in act with falsehood. Oh, that proud man should e'er descend to play The tempter's part, and lure men to their ruin! Deceit and honour badly ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... springing of a land-wind from the West!" —Wherefore? Ah yes, you frolic it to-day! To-morrow, and the pageant moved away Down to the poorest tent-pole, we and you Part company: no other may pursue Eastward your voyage, be informed what fate Intends, if triumph or decline await The tempter ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... foe. Death strikes the hero to the dust. He falls In honour's mantle, the triumphant cry Of victory on his pallid lip expires! But what are conquests of the bow and spear, And Alexander's victories, compared With the stern warfare which the soul maintains Against the subtle tempter of mankind— The base corruptions of a sinful world— An evil conscience and a callous heart? Oh, vanquish these!—and through the gates of death Triumphant pass and win a ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... privileges go, especially of those privileges that border upon the temptation, as she here did: We may eat of all but one. By this she goeth to the outside of her liberty, and sets herself upon the brink of the danger. Christ might have told the tempter, when he assaulted him, That he could have made stones bread; and that he could have descended from the pinnacle of the temple, as afterwards he did (Matt 4:3-7; Luke 4); but that would have admitted of other questions. Wherefore he chooseth to lay aside such needless and unwarrantable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... be pleaded that persuasion is his instrument, not violence; is that no reason rather for a deeper loathing? since he who uses violence (42) at any rate declares himself in his true colours as a villain, while the tempter corrupts the soul of him who ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... congregation; and at other seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text of scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed himself, like Samson, to condemn sin wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of bearing the name of gentleman: for it is in the name of King Charles II. that an emissary, whom I took for an honest man, came and laid an infamous snare for me. I have fallen into that snare; so much the worse for me. Now, you the tempter," said he to the king, "you the executor," said he to D'Artagnan; "remember what I am about to say to you; you have my body, you may kill it, and I advise you to do so, for you shall never have my mind or my will. And now, ask me not a single word, as from this moment I will not open my ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The literalist knows not God, but he alone who bears God in himself. Man is favored above other beings with the freedom to dwell in himself or in God. When man came out from God, he was his own tempter and made himself proud and selfish. Thus evil, which had before remained hidden, was revealed, and became sin. As the separation from God is an eternal act, so also redemption and resurrection form an inner event. Christ is born in everyone who gives up the I-ness (Ichheit); ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... influence. A hostile influence is the most odious of things. The enemy himself, the alien creature, lies in his own camp, and in a speculative moment we may put ourselves in his place and learn to think of him charitably; but his spirit in our own souls is like a private tempter, a treasonable voice weakening our allegiance to our own duty. A zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace, did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Egyptian grenadiers, were you not, and had your musket of honour at Marengo. I remember you very well, my good friend. So the old fires are not yet extinguished! They still burn up when you think that your Emperor is wronged. And you, Colonel Despienne, you would not even listen to the tempter. And you, Gerard, your faithful sword is ever to be between me and my enemies. Well, well, I have had some traitors about me, but now at last we are beginning to see ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... temptations, and to the bitter taunts of the many incarnate evil spirits who called her an idiot simply because, lovely and accomplished as she was, she patiently bore privations and sufferings when many were ready to pour riches into her lap. To the last she resisted the tempter, however fascinating the form he took, and never lost faith to the day when she calmly closed a life in which she ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... about the house or attending to the wants of her family, she was free; but no sooner did she lay her head on the pillow than in rushed the cry of the sea, fierce, unkind, craving like a wild beast. Again and again she spoke of it to me, for it came to her mingled with the voice of the tempter, saying, "Cruel chance," over and over again. For although the two words contradict each other when put together thus, each in its ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... his true companion sprang. A being thus ardent will often go wrong in her strenuous course; will often alarm, sometimes provoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievous harm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speaking tempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of this pleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-places of a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, men militant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, and looking for peace hereafter." ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... determine to have it all the more, because it was forbidden, just as Adam and Eve did; so that we wished for it much more than we should if our parents had given it to us? Did we not in our hearts accuse our parents of grudging it to us, and listen to the voice of the tempter, as Eve did, when the serpent tried to make out that God was niggardly to her, and envious of her, and did not want her to be wise, lest she should be ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... viewed as the bracelet. Edwin tells the tempter that he wears no jewellery but his watch and chain, which were his father's; ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... it sufficient, grace is ever nigh; If in the path of rectitude you tread, No ill shall harm you; you will soon descry The tempter's snare, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the servitude of care. Let others boast of material goods; mine is the privilege of not needing these or stooping to their control. I will have but a temperate desire of things open to choice, as they are good and present, and the tempter shall find no hold for his hands by which to draw me astray. I will be content with any sojourn or any company, for there is none, howsoever perilous, which may not prove and strengthen the defences of my soul. For I have built an impregnable citadel whence, if only I am ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 'bout the prettiest eggs ever was," continued the tempter, "all blue and pink and green, and 'bout a million kinds. They're just perzactly ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... "Ayaunt, tempter!" cried Ananda, hurling the phial indignantly away. "I defy thee! and will have recourse to my old deliverer—Gnooh ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... tempter sees that our heart is so firmly established in grace that we flee from sin as from a serpent, and that its very shadow, which is temptation, frightens us, he contents himself with disquieting us, seeing that he cannot make us yield ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Therein lay the tempter's power. Not in appetite—he was no swine to swill for love of the draught. When he did yield he drained the cup scarce tasting its contents. But ah, the freedom from the sickness that tortured him, the weight that oppressed him! And ah, the exhilaration, physical and mental, the delightful ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the tempter? All the strong virile blood rushed through his veins, and he only made a feeble fight to subdue it. He did not really want ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... says (Gen. ad lit. xi, 5): "We must not suppose that the tempter would have overcome man, unless first of all there had arisen in man's soul a movement of vainglory which should have been checked." Now the vainglory which preceded man's defeat, which was accomplished through his falling into mortal sin, could be nothing more than a venial sin. In like manner, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of womanhood have always been low and unworthy. Rather than being considered a help-mate to man, she has ever been regarded as his tempter and seducer. The proverbs of India are full of these base insinuations concerning womanhood. "What is the chief gate to hell? Woman." This is only one of a host of common sayings which brand the womanhood of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... if you should linger waiting, There's another voice will say: Never mind, nobody'll know it, Even though you disobey.' And this other voice, this Tempter, Sure will lead you to the wrong, While the voice of the good angel Fills your ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... and at the expense of the future happiness which now I have in my view, but shall then, I fear, quickly lose sight of; for I am but flesh, a man, a mere man, have passions and affections as likely to possess and overthrow me as any man: O be not my friend and my tempter both together!" ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the fact that by His own occult powers He was able to convert the very stones into bread, and it demanded that He work the miracle for His own physical needs—a practice deemed most unworthy by all true occultists and mystics. "Turn this stone into bread, and eat" cried the voice of the Tempter. But Jesus resisted the temptation although He knew that by the power of His concentrated thought He had but first to mentally picture the stone as bread and then will that it be so materialized. The ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... that you could ever go to jail if you had stolen every horse in my stable—and everything else I have? Don't give another thought to the matter. It was a harmless bit of fun that hurt nobody. As to Molly's fibbing—I was the tempter. What was the child to do? I think all the more of her for standing between ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... arch-tempter. He came with his subtlest temptations, and bitterest enmity, and most malignant cunning. Could there be greater evidence, by contrast, of the drawing power of His purity and goodness and ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... represented. In one poem (ix.) the miracles of Christ in His earthly ministry and His descent into Hades are narrated with considerable spirit and eloquence. Besides being a student of the Bible, Prudentius is a theologian. His theology is that of the Nicene Creed. The Fall of man, the personality of the Tempter, the mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, the Virgin-birth, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, the pains of the lost and the bliss of the saints, the resurrection of the Body and the life everlasting—these are the themes of his ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... back to a Sunday School class of his childhood and his infantile horror for the tale of a tempter on a high mountain offering the possession of all ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the boy argued with himself and coquetted with the tempter. Before the afternoon was over he felt (as he imagined) quite comfortable in his own mind over the affair. The rod was tied up again in its bag exactly as it had been before, and only wanted an opportunity to be returned to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... were convinced that God sometimes allowed bad spirits of every class to exercise a destructive influence on parts of the world and of human life. The only reservation made was that the man to whom the Evil One came as tempter, could use his free will to resist. In Italy the demonic influence, especially as shown in natural events, easily assumed a character of poetical greatness. In the night before the great inundation of the Val d'Arno in 1333, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... He's scorn and derision all, Hydra, if true to his breed. We shall see! Just so a groom, with the bridle behind him, Tempts a free horse with some corn in a sieve. Will London's Hydra let "tentatives" blind him, Snap at the bait, and the tempter believe? Or will the "hero"—in form of Committee— Really prove wax for the Hydra to mould? Yes, there's the club, but it's rather a pity Hercules seems a bit feeble of hold. Tentative heroes may suit modern urgency, LUBBOCK may win where ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... and His Father would come and take up their abode and dwell with them as a constant companion forever, even unto the end, guiding them in all truth and showing them things past, present, and to come. From day to day I kept my mind in a constant strain upon this subject. Notwithstanding, the tempter was ever on the alert, and contested every inch of ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... beneath which, in long festoons, rested a huge black-snake. I can conceive of nothing more overpoweringly terrible to an unsuspecting family of birds than the sudden appearance above their domicile of the head and neck of this arch enemy. One thinks of the great myth of the tempter and the cause of all our woe, and wonders if the Arch-One is not playing off some of his pranks before him. Whether we call it snake or devil matters little. I could but admire his terrible beauty, however; his black, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... who has read this chapter up to this point, objects that I am laying too great stress on one aspect of the problem, bringing forward with undue insistence the importance of restricting prostitution—the removal of the woman tempter as the only practical way to prevent the spread of sexual diseases. She does not, I think, like my dismissal of conscious moral striving from a principal place in my scheme of reformation. That, at least, I gather from what she has said to me. Stronger, however, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... that of Aphrodite floating in the air, or of Madonna adjuring Christ in the "Paradiso," or of Christ Himself judging by the silent simplicity of his divine attitude the worldly judge at whose tribunal He stands, or of the tempter raising his jewelled arms aloft to dazzle with meretricious brilliancy the impassive God above him, or of Eve leaning in irresistible seductiveness against the fatal tree, or of S. Mark down-rushing through the sky to ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... what to do, which the more she thought, the more it distracted her; she was a thousand times about to end her Life, and, at one stroke, rid her self of the Infamy, that, she saw, must inevitably fall upon her; but Nature was frail, and the Tempter strong: And after a thousand Convulsions, even worse than Death it self, she resolv'd upon the Murder of Henault, as the only means of removing all the obstacles to her future Happiness; she resolv'd on this, but after she had done so, she ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the tempter's voice, but he rode onward as if unheeding, his chin sunken upon his breast, his eyes dark ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... my peril is less than it was; and I have, therefore, every hope of victory at last. In my wilderness, some tempter or another comes, at times when my heart is hungry, and my faith is fainting, and shows me such a lot as yours—all the sunny kingdoms of love and hope given into your hand—and then the desert of my lot looks dreary enough for the moment; but then arises the very ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... so, whether the weaker or stronger He blames the most, The tempter or tempted a tithe of His tender compassion claims, Whether the selfish or too unselfish, those who through love or lust are lost, He in His infinite wisdom and ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... know all. My daughter gave a worthless tempter the right to expect the worst from her. You, whom we deemed the ornament of this house, whose purity hitherto was stainless, are to blame if people passing on the street point at it! Alas! alas! Our honour, our ancient, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ill repute, had ordered champagne for an abandoned woman, and had no sense of sin when he awoke the next morning! The devil, in the language of orthodox theology, had led him there. He had fallen under the influence of the tempter of his youth, and all in him save the carnal ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not of a saturnine and cold complexion; and, fearful and guarded as Miss was against rakes, I had some latent apprehension that the tempter might be at hand. But the play-house was the region of delight. Mrs. Jordan I had never seen, and to reject a lady's invitation was as cowardly as to refuse a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and hear what was passing. The first person upon whom my eyes rested was young Hammond, who sat talking with a man older than himself by several years. At a glance, I saw that this man could only associate himself with Willy Hammond as a tempter. Unscrupulous selfishness was written all over his sinister countenance; and I wondered that it did not strike every one, as it did me, with instant repulsion. There could not be, I felt certain, any common ground of association, for two such persons, but the dead level of ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... to caress it, it crept upon my knees and licked my face, as if it meant to tell me that there was one who understood; that I was not alone. And the love of the faithful little beast thawed the icicles in my heart. I picked it up in my arms and fled from the tempter; fled to where there were lights and men moving, if they cared less for me than I for them—anywhere so that I saw and heard the river ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... erring human nature look more abject than in the person of a severe exactor of duty, who has immolated thousands to the wrath of offended law, suddenly himself becoming a capital offender, a glozing tempter in search of accomplices, and in that character at once standing before the meanest of his own dependents as a self-deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, ipso facto, a suppliant for his own ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... So this was a Bible with large type, and a candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leaned his elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his forehead,—tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... temper, always fiery, had been sorely tried. Dropping his pick, he gripped the tempter by the shoulder with fingers that held him like a vice. He pressed Melhuish backward until they stood within a foot of the verge of the black rift. Melhuish's face was gray in the candle-light as he heard the dislodged pebbles splash sullenly into the water, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... seems to us, in spite of the admiration of English critics, a decided failure. There is in him no trace of either the cruel, icy-cold malignity of the fiend of Goethe, or the awful grandeur of Milton's Tempter. It cannot be said that Marlowe's Devil seduces Faustus. He is almost on the verge of repentance himself; of the two, he is decidedly the better Christian. The proposition of the compact comes from Faustus himself, and Mephistopheles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the yielding to the tempter. As long as the prohibition was undoubted, and the fatal results certain, the fascinations of the forbidden thing were not felt. But as soon as these were tampered with, Eve saw 'that the tree was good for food, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... all mankind Foederally, yea, Naturally, in him, has involved this Infant in the guilt of it. And the poison of the old serpent, which infected Adam when he fell into his Transgression, by hearkening to the Tempter, has corrupted all mankind, and is a seed unto such diseases as this Infant is now laboring under. Lord, what are we, and what are our children, but ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to reason," urged the tempter. "You get in my way, but I don't want to let you be sponged out. The devil of it is that if I get you a pardon—and I'm not sure that I can get it—you'll marry the girl. I might have you shipped to the Barbadoes as a slave with some of the others, but to be ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... that moment she remembered that he must have given it to her by mistake; and therefore she had no right to it. But again the voice of the tempter whispered, "He gave it, and how do you know that he did not intend to make you a present of it? Keep it; he will never know it, even if it should be a mistake; for he had too many such bills in that great ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted, On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore, Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me, tell me, I implore!" Quoth the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... continue to co-operate with God's grace, even in the highest stage, and not cease to resist our impulses, as if all came from God. "To speak otherwise is to speak the language of the tempter." (This is, of course, directed against the immoral apathy attributed to Molinos.) The only difference between the vigilance of pure and that of interested love, is that the former is simple and peaceable, while the latter has not yet cast out fear. It is false teaching ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... he, I was much moved, you may be sure, when I came to reflect: But, at first, I was so assured of being a successful tempter, and spoiling her voyage, that I was vexed, and much out of humour; but when I came to reflect, as I said, I was quite overcome with this instance of her prudence, her penitence, and her resolution; and more admired her than I ever had done. Yet I could ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... out, And crush the horrid haunts of sin and ruin, Where liquid poison for the soul is sold! And while the victims of this deadly traffic Must bear the penalty of crimes committed, Even when the light of reason has been quenched, That you would frame a law to reach the tempter, Nor let those go unscathed who cause the crime. And then he prays, most fervently, that all Who may, like him, be tempted by the bowl, Would lake a warning from his fearful fate, And "touch not, taste not" make their solemn pledge, And so ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... barefaced, and bewrays that fearful ugliness, which none can conceive but he that hath viewed it. He hath looked into the depth of the bottomless pit, and hath seen his own offence tormented in others, and the same brands shaken at him. He hath seen the change of faces in that cool one, as a tempter, as a tormentor; and hath heard the noise of a conscience, and is so frightened with all these, that he can never have rest till he have run out of himself to God, in whose face at first he find rigour, but afterwards sweetness in his bosom; he bleeds first from the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... soul; a woman's pretty face, a woman's coaxing word, was quite sufficient to overthrow all the strength of soul he possessed. He could resist no temptation that came across his path; he was an easy prey to the tempter. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... driven the Confederate envoy, Mr. Mason, to seek what he deems a more hospitable shore. The inducement of cotton for our idle looms and our famishing people has been a strong one to our statesmen as well as to our people, and the Tempter has been at their side. Despotism, like Slavery, is necessarily propagandist. It cannot bear the contagion, it cannot bear the moral rebuke, of neighboring freedom. The new French satrapy in Mexico needs some more congenial and some weaker neighbor than the United Republic, and we have had more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Jesus, in his reply to the tempter, he says, "Thou shalt not live by bread alone;" the whole force of the argument depending on the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Mariette will have as much for every month of the year, if you only say so," said the tempter. "Yes, all this gold; do you hear? ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... money," said the maiden. "No matter," said the complaisant tempter: "I will wait four years, and send in the bill to your husband by degrees. Many ladies do it." Fancy the position of a pure young girl, wishing innocently to make herself beautiful in the eyes of her husband, and persuaded to go into his house with a trick like this upon her conscience! Yet it ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wise doctor, who knew other than owls and owlets, knew the tempter in that form. Faustus was not your man for fancies and figments; and he tells us that, to his certain knowledge, it was verily an owl's face that whispered so much mischief in the ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who had grown as crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These uncomplimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in a better tempter, you may believe. The same Court ladies, when they had beautiful dark hair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen. So they were not very high-spirited ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred. 3. And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4. But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself among thorns. Once, when his austere rules and severity excited the resentment ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... entangle you in words, but if I were it would be all part of the play. You are undergoing your period of temptation. I am the tempter in default of a better. In the old fashion of temptations it wouldn't do to have the tempter old and plain. Then you were expected to fall in love; now we ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... wonder at the depraved state of society in this city," said Guly, earnestly, "when woman, who should be the first to frown upon and discountenance such practices, not only is the tempter, but the hearty partaker of them. I am certain if the other sex were more strict—would positively refuse to attend places of amusement on Sabbath evenings, would refrain utterly from drinking wine themselves, and offering it to others—there would be a great change here ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... form, they brought him here; and with him began that melancholy line of victims, whose legacy was that one should draw the other after him. The shedding of blood by one's own hand is a terrible legacy. That blood besprinkles children and brothers. That malicious tempter who directed the father's hand to strike the sharp knife home into his own heart stands there in ambush forever behind his successors' backs; he is ever whispering to them; 'Thy father was a suicide, thy brother himself sought out death; over thy head, too, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai |
